Tag Archive: Ancient Greek
The Riddle of the Labyrinth (Margalit Fox)
“This is the true story of one of the most mesmerizing riddles in western history and, in particular, of the unsung woman who would very likely have solved it, had she only lived a little longer”, begins Fox’s telling of the decipherment of Linear B. As with so many of the early, imaginative theories of the meaning of the Linear B script, however, this is less accurate and more enticing than the truth. Alice Elizabeth Kober’s role in the solving of this mystery was overshadowed, but not ‘unsung’ as was Rosalind Franklin’s role in the decipherment of the structure of…
Continue Reading →Learning Ancient Greek – in Belfast and Adelaide
In pre-Covid days I idly browsed the magnificent sites for ancient language holiday courses at ivy-dressed, stone-built universities intending – one day – to enrol in a fortnight of glamorous intellectual slavery at Cornell or Oxford. I would work as hard as Dicaeopolis, slaving over my participles into the night, my Liddell and Scott illuminated by candles for some reason. I’d return to my usual term-time classes at the WEA in February, all shiny and brilliant from my overseas deep dive. One day…one day…And then of course, someone ate a bat. So overseas or even interstate intensives (there are some…
Continue Reading →5 Reasons to Learn Ancient Greek – New Beginners’ Class!
As TVC devotees know, I am in my fifth year of Ancient (or, more properly, Classical) Greek at the WEA with Dr Alessandro Boria. Now, for the first time we will have a beginners’ class as well as the more advanced class. Here are 5 good reasons why you should sign up today to the new class:- Here are the first two reasons, which it is compulsory for us to recite – Learning a language develops and hones the brain – the older the language, the more ancient its roots in human thought and the better for the grey matter; You would…
Continue Reading →Circe by Madeline Miller
"The young man was leaning against my house, watching me. His hair was loose and tousled, his face bright as a jewel. .. I knew who he was, of course I knew...That laughing gadfly of the gods, Hermes" (Painting by Nicholas Hillliard).
“In due course we came to the island of Aeaea, the home of the beautiful Circe, a formidable goddess, though her voice is like a woman’s. She is the sister of the wizard Aeetes, both being children of the Sun who lights the world by the same mother, Perse the daughter of Ocean”.* So does Homer introduce us to the witch goddess Circe, who famously turned men to swine. After giving Odysseus’ men a potion, Homer’s Circe “struck them with her wand, drove them off, and penned them in the pigsties. For now to all appearance they were swine: they had pigs’…
Continue Reading →House of Names by Colm Toibin
"I don't know why everyone is SHOUTING..." (Orestes pursued by the Furies - William Adolphe Bouguereau,1862)
Irish novelist Colm Tóibín’s 2016 re-imagining of the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, his return from Troy and the bloody aftermath, starts well. The longest, first part is narrated by Agamemnon’s enraged wife, Clytemnestra, and her ghost narrates the shortest, part five. Clytemnestra’s voice is the best, capturing something of the remote, wild affect of the ancient Greek verse we know:- “We are all hungry now. Food merely whets our appetite, it sharpens our teeth; meat makes us ravenous for more meat, as death is ravenous for more death. Murder makes us more ravenous, fills the soul with satisfaction that is fierce and then luscious enough to create a…
Continue Reading →